See Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Opening Redone With Lower Decks Animation And Comedy
Star Trek surprised fans by debuting their Lower Decks/Strange New Worlds crossover several days early on Saturday rather than waiting til Thursday as expected. The result is out first-ever look at the Enterprise done up in Lower Decks animation style, and with a little Lower Decks comedy thrown in as well.
It happens on the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 episode “Those Old Scientists”. The episode draws its title from a Lower Deck reference where the show’s first officer Jack Ransom refers to the Kirk/Pike era as “TOS.” In this case, it doesn’t stand for “The Original Series” but instead stands for “Those Old Scientists.”
After a cold open which takes place entirely in the 2-D animated world of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the normal Star Trek: Strange New Worlds opening credits begin. Except they’ve been changed. All the shots, and all the sequences are the same, only they’ve been completely redone by the Star Trek: Lower Decks team in their 2D animation style.
Here’s some of what it looks like…
However, the Lower Decks team wasn’t content simply to do a shot-for-shot remake of the standard Strange New Worlds credits. They threw in reference to their own, more comedic opening credits by bringing the alien seen sucking on the USS Cerritos warp nacelle over to drain power off the Enterprise…
For comparison, here’s how that same nacelle-sucking alien looks in the opening credits of Star Trek: Lower Decks…
And then, they went a step further by throwing in a reference to a Koala. It’s a deep-dive joke from numerous episodes of Lower Decks where characters report seeing the universe resting on the back of a Koala. Here he is on Strange New Worlds…
The animation fun in the episode finishes off with a scene where the entire crew of the USS Enterprise is rendered in animated form, and we get one last beauty shot of the animated Enterprise…
